Your One & Only(48)

“I found you,” she said. “You okay?”

When he nodded, coming close to her, her grasp on the bars relaxed.

“What took you so long?” he teased.

“My sisters. They won’t let me out of their sight.”

Althea observed everything with slow deliberation, as if she were forming a puzzle of the minute details surrounding her. Her mouth turned down as she took in his cell. The pile of metal chain in the corner, the filthy pallet he slept on, and the tin platter for food.

He shifted uncomfortably. She chewed her lip. “This is where you sleep?”

Jack could only shrug.

“It’s horrible,” she said.

“It’s not like I can go back to the lab. I burned it down, remember?”

Her eyes darted back to him. “Don’t joke about that.”

“I just meant, maybe when they figure out I’m innocent, they’ll let me out of here.”

“They won’t,” she said decisively. Her eyes focused on him. “I need to tell you something, Jack. You have a brother.”

She said it so quickly, so matter-of-factly, it took him a moment to absorb the words. He must’ve appeared dazed, because Althea’s voice sharpened, drawing his attention back to her. “Jack?”

She was watching him, and he wanted to say he was okay, but his thoughts were so jumbled his mouth wouldn’t form the right syllables. The word brother sounded over and over in his head, blazing and loud.

He sat heavily. “What?” he managed to get out.

“I saw him in the banana grove,” she said. “His name is Jonah.”

Althea recounted what had happened since Jack had been locked up. While she talked, he didn’t ask why she’d been in the grove with Carson-312, of all people.

He tried to hold back a smirk when she described how Jonah had knocked Carson to the ground and taunted him. Carson had it coming. Jack wished it could have been him defending Althea, making the other boy look scared and foolish. But then Althea said Jonah had threatened the Council, and actually shot Carson with an arrow before running away.

“He acted like it was fun, hurting Carson, scaring us. He said he would hurt the Council.”

Althea was leaving out some part of the story, but there was already so much information to consider that he didn’t press her.

The blue-gray eyes he’d seen outside the barn wall—he hadn’t been dreaming.

He had a brother.

He’d brought Jack water, helped him. He’d moved the bag dropped by Carson-292 so Jack could reach it. His brother. Jonah, he said the name to himself.

Althea waited for Jack to respond, like she expected something from him, some insight or explanation for the other boy’s actions, but Jack didn’t know what to say. He didn’t mention the water or the parcel. Althea seemed to have already formed an opinion about this other boy, and Jack wasn’t ready to form his own.

“I should get back to the dorm,” Althea said eventually.

She tucked her dark hair behind her ear, uncertain what to do with her hands. He wanted to ask her to visit him again, but that was what he’d always said to the Nyla before she left, and he didn’t want to say the same thing to Althea.

Then she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack.”



The next time she came, she brought a clean blanket, and he recognized the soft yellow that was the Altheas’ color. The blanket belonged to her, and he could smell the scents of vanilla and lavender on it.

After that, every time she came, she brought some small comfort for him. She gave him a bar of pink, flowery-smelling soap. She brought him his guitar from the cottage, and having it again made the nights alone more bearable.

She also brought food. Jack would have been happy simply with larger portions of the meat, potatoes, and carrots he usually had at the end of the day. She brought exotic creams whipped into icy clouds that tingled on his tongue, and cubes of meat grown like vegetables in gardens. Once she brought a little pod like milkweed. She sat outside the bars with her feet tucked under her and opened it, revealing a ball of golden cotton. She held it out to him.

“Try it,” she said.

He held the bit of fluff uncertainly, and then put it on his tongue, where it melted into sugary air, leaving a taste of lemon in his mouth. It was so sweet he wasn’t sure he liked it, but he liked the way she leaned forward, waiting for his reaction.

On this night, a breeze blew from the east, and laughter drifted to them from Vispera’s Commons. The moon painted the distant mountains silver and blue. Jack wanted to ask her to bring him more useful things—a pack, tools, food for a journey. Then he noticed her yellow dress and the knit shawl bundled in her lap.

“It’s a Pairing night,” he said. He tipped his chin at her, a question stalled on his lips.

She pulled at the fringe on her shawl before stating the obvious. “I didn’t go.”

After a long pause, he asked, “Won’t they miss you?”

She’d been coming to see him every night. She’d certainly be missed during a Gen-310 Pairing Ceremony. He was indescribably glad she was with him instead of Pairing with one of the clones, but no clone ever missed that ceremony. It would mean trouble for her, and because of him.

She didn’t answer, but met his eyes, communicating something he couldn’t quite make out.